Bauman on Lighting Netflix's 'Monster: Ed Gein Story'
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- Michael Bauman shot Netflix's "Monster: The Ed Gein Story" directed by Max Winkler, drawing on his Wisconsin childhood where neighbors and relatives told stories of Ed Gein as local legend
- "Monster: The Ed Gein Story" is the third installment of Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan's Netflix anthology (after "Dahmer" and the Menendez story), with scripts that incorporate Alfred Hitchcock and Tobe Hooper as characters to acknowledge Gein's pop-culture influence
- Production design matched Gein's late-electrification rural home with kerosene lamps and old-fashioned interior light sources, and filming reversed the usual location-first workflow — California stage interiors were shot first, then a snowstorm greeted the Illinois crew on arrival before they later shredded 80 tons of ice for fake snow
- Bauman earned an Emmy nomination for the "Buxom Bird" episode, where widescreen "frames within frames" techniques via windows and doorways narrow the aspect ratio as two cops discover Gein's carnage
- Panavision supplied vintage lenses and a 58mm Petzval with swirly bokeh to isolate Charlie Hunnam's performance as Ed, with depth of field growing shallower around him as his journey darkens
- A show researcher interviewed two of Bauman's family friends who were teenagers in the 1950s and could describe specific details about Gein, including the way he walked — a reminder Bauman calls "not ancient history"
Why it matters: The Emmy nomination elevates Bauman from a behind-the-scenes craftsperson to a recognized industry voice, and his personal ties to Gein's Plainfield community transform a true-crime prestige series into something closer to oral history, with visual choices grounded in lived memory rather than generic period recreation.
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